


Summer Castles

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Kids, just kids being awkward and becoming friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt meme:</p><p>I'd like an AU where Bucky is actually from Russia, and when he's a kid his parents move to New York, where he meets Steve by way of protecting him from some bullies.</p><p>Even though he doesn't understand what the argument is about, he knows three against one is unfair, and looks like he couldn't harm a fly. Anyway, Steve and Bucky immediately become friends, nevermind that they can't understand each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Castles

It’s nearly July, nearly Steve’s birthday, so the sidewalk is scorching hot on the side of his arm when he falls on it. There’s the feeling of grit, and he can smell anxious blood in his nose but he’s not sure if it’s bleeding yet or if it’s just his mind anticipating it. Of course he’s thinking of all the ways he could be really hurt in the next minute, but mostly it’s guilt: his mom told him not to mess with those two boys from across the street, even if they were stealing someone else’s bike, because she can’t afford any more stitches or dentist bills for teeth he chips (not that he always tells her when he needs either).

Steve looks up into the sun and tries to push himself up fast, but just then someone says something loud in a language Steve doesn’t know, that might be Russian. 

The boys turn around, and there’s another kid there, one who looks more Steve’s age. He’s wearing a baseball cap, so Steve can’t see his face, but his feet are planted wide.

“What the fuck did you say?” the biggest of Steve’s enemies says to the stranger.

The kid says something else that Steve still can’t understand, pointing to Steve and the guys around him; when Steve’s larger attacker steps forward with menace in his shoulders, the stranger throws a soccer ball hard at his face and then punches the smaller one in the gut. Steve’s still staring into the sun, so he can’t quite see what happens, but he scrambles up to help. By the time he’s standing, though, it seems like the battle’s done. Steve’s rescuer has the soccer ball under his arm and is staring down the two boys from across the street, who are cursing him and threatening him but also . . . walking away.

Steve draws a hand under his nose—it comes away clean, no blood, although his lip feels a little fat. “Thank you,” Steve says, remembering his manners late. He’s trying to think if he knows this kid—jaw-length shaggy brown hair under a baseball cap, long shorts, sneakers—and then the kid looks at him with concern, examining his face, and says something that Steve would bet translates to, _Are you okay?_

Twisting to look at the back of his arm (which is barely even grazed), Steve feels a little light-headed. He got off lucky, for sure. “No problem, I’m fine,” he says. He sticks out his hand, feeling that the stranger is owed a proper introduction. “I’m Steve Rogers,” he says.

The stranger looks at his hand, then shakes it with a warm and slightly gritty hand of his own and very carefully says, “James Biryukov.” Later, Steve will learn that James is a name of choice, not found on any official documents, something that his friend had picked when he arrived in Brooklyn. In fact, he chose it from a list of American presidents.

 But for the moment, Steve and James shake hands and then James says something else, beckoning with a hand motion. Steve mentally translates to _Come see my apartment_ , or something like that?

Technically, Steve isn’t allowed to go off the block, but as it turns out that’s not a problem because James even lives in the same building as him, just on a ground-floor apartment instead of the fifth floor. They leave the blinding light of outdoors to go into the cool, if musty, stairwell, and then James pushes open the door of what’s obviously a newly occupied apartment. There are a lot of boxes, not a lot of furniture, and a lady sitting on a folded-up futon with an old, heavy-looking laptop on her legs, typing furiously. James calls out to her (Steve recognizes this word, he thinks: “Mama!”) and she looks up, then frowns and seems to be scolding him.

She thinks James has been fighting, Steve realizes. Well, he _has_ been fighting, but only to defend Steve. “It was my fault,” Steve says as James argues back. “Please, it was my fault.”

James’ mother looks at Steve, and then her expression softens and she unfolds herself from the futon, leaves, and comes back with the familiar first-aid things he’s seen his own mom use tons of times. She directs Steve to sit on the edge of the futon, dabs at his elbow with hydrogen peroxide, and tells him to hold a bag of frozen carrots to his lip; she says it all in Russian, but underneath it’s in Mother, a language Steve thinks he knows well. When she’s satisfied he’s all right, she leaves James with one last instruction and goes off down the hallway.

James keeps his soccer ball on his knees and perches next to Steve on the futon. “It’s okay,” Steve says, trying not to be an awkward presence. “Those guys do that all the time. Usually I do better.” Well, that part is a lie, even if James doesn’t understand it.

James shakes his head and says something; then, when Steve doesn’t understand, he makes his hands into fists and poses with them by his face like a prize fighter. Steve laughs. Then James picks up the soccer ball again, raising it with an obvious question.

Steve takes the bag of carrots away from his lip. James is asking him to play soccer? Steve isn’t that good at it—to be honest, isn’t that good at most physical things—and it seems like James is, but so far James has been patient. It’s worth a try, he thinks. “Yeah, okay,” he says, giving the bag back to James, who puts it back into the freezer.

So James grins at Steve and leads the way back out through the building and into the little parking lot that they’re not supposed to play in, making his way with a confidence that would make anyone think he’d lived in the complex for years, not what must be less than a month.

The sun stays high in the sky for a while, and some littler kids watch as Steve and James more or less just kick the old soccer ball around. Steve was right; he’s obviously much less good at it than James, but James doesn’t seem bothered by it. The kid is like a ball of energy, and he doesn’t seem to be bothered by much. At one point, he takes his cap off to tie his hair back with a hair tie from around his wrist, and then puts the cap back on again.

By the time Steve has heading up the stairs back to his own apartment, the light has gotten softer and his mom is home and making hot dogs. “There you are,” she says, looking him over (Steve hopes she doesn’t notice the lip, which is much better now). “I was getting worried.” But she doesn’t look that worried as she says it. “Did you have fun?” she asks. “Did you find someone to play with?" 

“Yeah,” Steve says.

The next day, Steve is pretty sure his mom is shocked when James knocks on his door and says, “Steve?” and then introduces himself to Steve’s mom, too.

Steve, who’s sketching on the couch, sits up abruptly, immediately embarrassed for no real reason. “Oh. Hi,” he says, coming to the door. “You want to do something?” Steve’s mom busies herself with wiping down the kitchen counter, although Steve thinks she’s watching really.

James makes a questioning sentence and touches the sketchbook, so Steve lets him take it and open it. James says something quick, raising his eyebrows, and Steve has to look at him a minute before he gets that James is impressed.

After he’s flipped through the pictures, James looks at Steve and nods once, like he’s figured him out.

They spend the afternoon in Steve’s private castle on the low roof of the closed-up store next to the apartments (easily accessible by a few stacked milk crates, due to the hill the apartments are built on), reading a selection of Steve’s old Captain America comics together. This is something else that’s not cool at school: Captain America was a real historical hero, along with all his Howling Commandos, but at school it’s weird to like history, weirder to like history and comics together.

Steve points to the characters and explains, hoping he’s not boring James, but James doesn’t seem bored. In fact, James seems to be absorbing everything, even asks him to repeat himself a few times and points to a few things for clarification.

“Bucky?” James says, tapping on the picture of Cap’s blue-jacketed best friend, the sniper “Bucky” Barnes. A little zip of delight thrills through Steve’s heart; Barnes is his favorite character, so he’s pleased that James seems to like him too.

“Yeah, you got it,” Steve says. “Bucky." 

“I got it,” James says with satisfaction (and Steve thinks James got that phrase from Steve, because he never said it yesterday—maybe Steve was using it that much). James mimes out the action of laying out like a sniper on the rooftop.

“You gotta be careful doing that,” Steve warns. “People’ll get mad.”

James ignores him, sniping an imaginary Nazi trooper next to the truck across the street that’s unloading pallets of soda.

“Yeah, you’re a real Bucky Barnes,” Steve says.

Maybe this is how he gets the idea, Steve isn’t sure, or maybe it’s just the similarity to his real last name, but the next day James has chosen to take this name for his own, too. He tells Steve’s mother that his name is Bucky and she thinks it’s just part of a game until a few days later when they’re all watching the Fourth of July fireworks out of the big stairwell window and Steve says, “Bucky, you ever see anything like this in Russia?”

“Holy jeez,” Steve’s mom says, stifling her laughter behind them as Bucky looks out the window, grinning as the colors shine on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment with your thoughts! Also I would kinda like to continue this - let me know what you think.
> 
> If you are wondering if the Captain America in this story is also named Steve Rogers - he was anonymous and had a superhero identity. Perhaps he was named Steve Rogers. But perhaps not. We shall never know.
> 
> Link to the prompt is here: http://stevebucky-fest.dreamwidth.org/307.html?thread=974387#cmt974387


End file.
